William S. Burroughs (Critical Lives)
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'Baker's vivid critical study of the Beat novelist Burroughs zings with the same energy and humour as his subject's fiction. Judiciously matching the biography to the books, Baker follows Burroughs's peregrinations from his relationship with Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac in New York, to Mexico, where he accidentally shot dead his wife, and eventually to Tangier, where he wrote his best-known work, The Naked Lunch. A literary life that is as entertaining as it is indispensable as a guide to Burroughs's writing.' --Sunday Times
'Baker's book is an excellent introduction' --Stride Magazine
'Baker's book is an excellent introduction' --Stride Magazine
Review
lucid and readable… manages to pick its through way through most of Burroughs’s major motivations and curious obsessions, and serves as a good introductory text for general readers, as well as a model of concision for Beat aficionados. Repeatedly, in various ways, it asks: just what possessed Burroughs? -- Times Literary Supplement 22 October 2010
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This is a really great book on Burroughs. Baker has done a fine job of getting inside the mind of Burroughs and writes with real sympathy for the man. It's a more distilled and concentrated portrait than Ted Morgan's Literary Outlaw. It gives the essence of Burroughs, and it also covers his life right up to the very end, unlike Morgan. (The last words Burroughs wrote were: "Love? What is it? Most natural painkiller what there is. LOVE" - then he had a heart attack and said "I'll be right back" - what an exit line.)
It's a more literary approach than we've had before, with a greater emphasis on Burroughs's artistic interests (like the Paul Klee picture - reproduced here - which Burroughs said was "an exact copy of what I saw high on yage in Pucallpa when I closed my eyes"). Baker also has a keen understanding of Burroughs's fantasies and personal world. If you're looking for a direct line into the Burrovian mindset - with all its lunacies and regrets - this is the book.
Great selection of illustrations, too, including a Burroughs "cut-up" in progress and a diagram of a wishing machine.
It's a more literary approach than we've had before, with a greater emphasis on Burroughs's artistic interests (like the Paul Klee picture - reproduced here - which Burroughs said was "an exact copy of what I saw high on yage in Pucallpa when I closed my eyes"). Baker also has a keen understanding of Burroughs's fantasies and personal world. If you're looking for a direct line into the Burrovian mindset - with all its lunacies and regrets - this is the book.
Great selection of illustrations, too, including a Burroughs "cut-up" in progress and a diagram of a wishing machine.
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